Megan Smith: What Happens When A Community Chooses Connection Over Crisis

What if the fastest way to improve youth mental health isn’t more crisis response, but better community conditions? We sit down with Dr. Megan Smith, associate professor at Boise State and founding director of Communities for Youth, to explore how upstream prevention makes thriving the norm and not the exception. From her move to Boise for family and purpose to the early classroom lessons that shaped her research, Megan connects the dots between lived experience, data, and real results.

We talk about the limits of telling teens to “cope harder” and the promise of building resilient communities where connection is easy, safe, and frequent. You’ll hear how teen brains collide with algorithm-driven feeds, why phones are only part of the story, and how student-led ideas like “disrupt the algorithm” can shift daily habits. The heart of the conversation is practical: collect youth voice, return local data fast, and bring coalitions together to focus on a few protective factors that matter most—trusted adults, belonging, and accessible activities after school.

This is community change you can feel. Boise State students help facilitate small groups where tense rooms turn into shared plans. Partners like St. Luke’s and the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation support the work, but success belongs to locals who stay focused and consistent. One community saw depressive symptom indicators drop from 66% to 24% across three survey cycles—proof that upstream prevention isn’t a slogan; it’s a system that works when everyone shows up. If you care about youth mental health, school culture, and smart, data-informed action, this conversation will give you a hopeful roadmap you can start using now.

Transcript

Meet Dr. Megan Smith

Chris 0:00

Welcome to On a First Name Basis, a podcast where we dive into the stories behind Boise State scholars. I'm Dr. Chris Saunders, but please just call me Chris. I'm a faculty member here at Boise State, and I'm excited to share with you some of the amazing stories of my colleagues, their journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and the connections they're building right here in our communities. Supported by the Boise State Division of Research and Economic Development, this podcast is all about getting to know the people and their work. Join me as we explore the human side of the innovative blue turf thinking happening at Boise State. Let's get to know each other more on a first name basis. On this episode of the show, our guest is Dr. Megan Smith. Megan is an associate professor in the School of Public and Population Health at Boise State University. She is also the founding director of Communities for Youth, an Idaho-based initiative. You will not find it anywhere else yet. Welcome to the show, Megan.

Megan 1:01

Thank you for having me.

Chris 1:03

The word I'm going to start off with the show is the idea of community. And you're going to we're going to talk about community at lots of different levels. And and the first level is when we think about community that we raise our kids in. And this will be important both to Megan's scholarly work, but also to the fact that that Megan is a parent. And when we think about, well, where do we want to raise our our kids? I don't think it's a stretch to say that that a lot of people find Idaho, the Treasure Valley, the Boise area as a really lovely place to raise, to raise kids. And so when you moved here, part of that drive was that this was a place that you wanted to raise your kids, right?

Megan 1:46

Yeah. In fact, six years ago, my husband also works at Boise State, and he came out for his interview and called me and said, I think I want to raise our daughter here. And I knew we were moving.

Why Boise For Family And Work

Chris 1:59

That there was that done.

Megan 2:00

I literally turned to my best friend at the time out in West Virginia and I said, We're moving to Boise, Idaho.

Chris 2:08

And had had you ever been here before? I had never been. So sight unseen.

Megan 2:11

Yes. I did come out a couple weeks later for my own interview and was immediately overwhelmed by how, you know, beautiful it was and the access to culture and food and things like that.

Chris 2:27

And also I think of too access to nature, right? The integrated. I don't think a lot of people appreciate sometimes that, you know, I can, for example, I can walk out of my office and in a few steps I'm now on the green belt next to the river. Right.

Megan 2:41

And uh yes. Uh so one of our early experiences, and we sort of got our house by happenstance, it was a really rough time in 2018. I don't know if people remember that market, but we had lost multiple offers and we were we're coming up to the time where we had to get here, right? So we were kind of desperate. We got so lucky. We love where we live. We live in the north, they I think they call it north and west now, but it it's just northwest Poise. Um, but anyway, we're right near Polcat, which is amazing. And then we also can jump on the greenbelt and be to work in five and a half miles, which is incredible. Like literally so such a gift, you know, coming from a place that was very hilly and so it was pretty bike inaccessible here, just jumping on the green belt and being able to sort of take the time to enjoy the river and things like that on your way to work uh is awesome.

Chris 3:39

And and speaking of the river, your your daughter, when you moved here, discovered something about rivers, right? Like what's in the what's in the bottom of the rivers?

Megan 3:46

Oh, yeah. So when we moved here, she was five. And she had only lived in places where she had never seen river rocks before. And so she leaned over the edge, I will never forget it, on Friendship Bridge, and was like, Mom, Dad, what's that at the bottom of the river? And we were like, those are rocks, baby. Because she had only seen rivers that were dirty or silty, and so she had never seen river rocks before.

Chris 4:11

Well, and I think that's important, just you know, if you've ever lived in a place with silty rivers, right? It it's there's the assumption, oh, the river's not clean. No, that's just how it looks. There's just a lot of fine a lot of fine particles. When I lived in Arkansas, there were some really beautiful pristine rivers. There were also some that just like it looks like chocolate milk. Yes. Like, and if you fly over that part of the country, look down, you're like, what's that big puddle of chocolate milk down there? That's that's just what the what the water looks like.

Megan 4:37

That was her experience, but it was also sort of eye-opening for my partner and I just to look at her and be like, oh, we're giving you this new awesome experience. And uh just so you know, we are on that, at least you know, the river here in town, multiple times through the summer. We love getting out there. Awesome family.

Chris 4:55

It's a wonderful tradition. Again, I I I think that people just assume that, well, every city you live in, you clearly can float down the middle of the middle of it on a river, right? That that's that's something that's certainly not unique, but it it is it's not a it's not a common, not a common thing. So it's nice to take advantage of that.

Teaching Roots And Real Classroom Needs

Megan 5:10

Yeah, I think we joke about buying a house in that neighborhood by Barber Park because then you could just use the river to commute to and from work because of the shuttle.

Chris 5:20

Fair enough. Yeah, love that plan. Using your your local resources to to your to your advantage. So so you most recently came from West Virginia. Yeah. What are like so talking about community, what are the the differences? I I'm I'm trying to think if I've been in West Virginia. If I drove through west or West Virginia, it was probably because I was just around Washington, D.C. for something. I may have crossed over briefly.

Megan 5:46

Yeah, it's about well, where we were in Morgantown, it's about three and a half hours from DC by car.

Chris 5:52

Did you take advantage of that?

Megan 5:54

Yeah, I did. So part of my professional role is advocacy work. And that was a pretty cool feature of being in Morgantown, West Virginia, is that you were two and a half hours from the state capitol and three and a half hours from the from DC.

Chris 6:12

So when you mean advocacy in terms of in talking with policymakers, and okay.

Megan 6:17

So I primarily work on children's issues, as you probably could assume from my research trajectory. But yeah, working on you know all sorts of support for young people for their mental health, for the support of their families through childcare and things like that. Early ed.

Chris 6:35

So so in West Virginia, that is you you started there as a seventh to twelfth grade teacher.

Megan 6:42

No, actually, in in West Virginia, I spent eight years there, and I had just gotten married. And so my husband got a job out there, and we moved across the country actually the day after we got married. So that was a cool honeymoon. Um, two dogs in a cross-country truck. And we lived there for eight years. When I got there, I intended to teach in the K-12 because I had been teaching K-12 and it's still my favorite job. But there were no math, science, or English jobs in the one and a half hour vicinity. And people had encouraged me a lot while I was a teacher that I should continue pursuing because I was I've always been like a very curious person and pretty driven to solve problems for young people. And so people kept telling me, you need to, you need to go do some more graduate schools. Go back to school again. Yes. Right. And so when I got to West Virginia, I I just feel like serendipitously things aligned. And so I ended up having a great job where as a graduate assistant, I was a pre-service teacher trainer, which I had been teaching, and that's a passion of mine. So it was really cool to be able to keep that while developing the researcher side of myself. And so we spent eight years in West Virginia. I started in grad school for human development and family studies, sort of laser focused on environments and schools that would support adolescent health and well-being, and then started doing the work. So through the dissertation, I got connected to a researcher named Alfgear Christensen who works on the Icelandic project or Icelandic Prevention Model. Um, and we began endeavoring to translate that work into the West Virginia context. So I did that for several years before here.

Chris 8:47

And so so you say, right, so you you taught before you're still your favorite job. So that was the seventh to twelfth grade range, right? Yeah, in California.

Megan 8:58

Yes.

Chris 8:58

And you taught science, you taught drama. What else did you teach?

Schools Beyond Academics

Megan 9:02

Well, I think a lot of Idaho teachers will understand this. So I worked in a very tiny rural mountain town, population of 3,600. So epic in so many ways. But I got to teach there, and I was hired as the English and drama teacher for the high school at the time. And they were having a really hard time finding and filling their middle school position. And I, through my experience, I had already worked in another place and I really loved middle school. And so eventually I just sort of said, hey, y'all, you need a middle school math and science teacher. If I work on that like licensing this summer and complete it, can I do that plus drama? So I basically made my dream job. And because they were a small town, they were like, sure, that sounds great. You're gonna solve our math science problem and still pick up drama. We'll fill the high school English, you know. So it was so, so fascinating. But what I realized early on and why I eventually went back and continued studying it, is that man, I was prepared to deliver content to my young people. Like I felt really good about that. What I was less prepared for in my education prep was all the needs my young people came into my classroom with beyond their academic needs, right? So, you know, my first year of teaching, I had a student go on a 48-hour missing. I had a student who was experiencing domestic violence. I had students couch surfing because they were homeless because of whatever family strife they were dealing with. And, you know, here these young people are coming into my classroom and I'm like, so let's talk about algebraic equations. And so I really wanted to investigate that. And I saw the great and still see the great beauty and potential of schools, which I think is really important to note because right now, for whatever reason in society, we've lost some of that. I'm getting emotional.

Chris 11:12

It's a weird we we care about our students deeply.

Megan 11:15

Yeah, and I do. I and schools are this beautiful institution that our society came together to create to help support families and communities to raise our young people. And there's so much potential in that environment to sort of help shore up what all the other parts of society are doing for our young people in our future, right? So not only academically, but I think we saw this pretty well in COVID. Schools are doing a lot more than academics, right? In some cases, they're supporting whole families to have the right foods they need, to have the right clothing they need. And and really schools are a place, regardless if it's the goal or not, right? Schools are a place where young people socialize with each other and with hopefully safe, inspiring role model adults, right? And so there's great potential there. And anyway, I, you know, being in schools for several years as a teacher, I really was curious like, what are the right ingredients or what are the right factors in a school to support that like best possible, right? Like everyone feels good, everyone feels like they're charged up to follow their purpose, everyone feels like they matter and like what we're doing here is so important.

Chris 12:41

And and I think with that too, the the kind of the robustness to make sure that we have the support when things don't go the the right way. And and when you talked about the context of your students, right? I think about that with my students now, even at a college age, of what is the context that they're learning? And that their the context of their lives is very different when I was a college student, right? It's it's very, it keeps changing, and that they're not always in the best place to learn the content. And I tell my students, you're probably not gonna struggle with the con you're gonna think you're struggling with the content. It it's really all of these, these other other things. And I and the kind of the sobering thing when I think about the 200 to 300 students I have in a semester, I will have I mean, without fail, there's gonna be a tragedy in that classroom every semester. Now the other students may not see that, right? Because they don't have the bird's eye view. But I, as their teacher, I see it every single, every single semester. It's not a matter of if. It's it's not something that I can ignore, right? I would imagine you have the same experience, right? It's not, it's not a oh, I hope to avoid this. You you're not going to avoid this, and you need to be to be ready to, you know, when when tragedies happen, oftentimes you hear about communities coming together, right? That's that resilience of a community. If you're off by yourself, there's very little resilience, resilience to that, or we use the phrase, it takes a village. Schools are a part of that village, right?

Individual Resilience vs Community Resilience

Megan 14:11

Well, I think I just want to step in because you just articulated something that often a research partner and I, Dr. Michael Mann here, also in the School of Public and Population Health, he and I talk about this a lot, which is right now, as a society, for whatever reason, and I again I think it's really well-intentioned, but we often talk about resilience as an individual thing. So we kind of do this thing where we focus on giving kids more and more tools to cope with the hard things, right? And what we are trying to do, and which you just articulated actually, is that we want to build resilient communities that promote young people being able to do well. And what I mean by that is instead of giving tools to young people to continue to cope with the bad factors in their environment or experiences in their environment, we want to, and this is the jargon, upstream prevention, we want to go ahead of that and build the communities in which young people naturally thrive rather than keeping the environment and the community yucky, right? With lots of hurdles and barriers and challenges, and telling kids, hey, if you just learn this new coping strategy, or if you just put your head down and do this, right? And we talk about this individual level of resilience and absolutely being resilient as an individual is is important. But if the only thing we're doing as a society is telling kids to cope harder, right? Cope better, cope harder, and not as the adults in the room who are responsible for that community and not doing anything to change those factors in the community that we know lead to substance use or mental health challenge, et cetera, then I think it's a pretty, pretty messed up thing we're asking young people to do.

Chris 15:53

And so do you think maybe the analogy here works or it doesn't, but do you think it's kind of a case of sometimes we slip into this? Well, it was it was hard for me when I was a kid in this way. So it needs to be hard for kids in that like are are we is it that the challenge right now, do you think, is to break that that cycle of, well, this is how it was for me, and so it's hard. And it's and I'm not saying that this is a legitimate challenge of how do we make things better? Not how do we repeat what what we experienced? How do we make it better? Because I think as humans, we're we're creatures of habit. And and and I imagine when I first started teaching, my examples of how to teach were my own teachers. It wasn't like, and I had some great teachers, but I also had some not great teachers, but that was what I I modeled mine off of was what was what I knew what I knew, not the aspirational. So do you think it is kind of a case of that if we slip into this, well, well, I I got through it, they can get through it. And and that we need to think more of, well, yes, we did get through it, but how many, how many, I'm trying to think of a good word, how many scars or how many embedded, right? Like for all the wonderful things that we all have, how many things are just like I I could have really done without that thing?

Megan 17:09

Well, the best is when people say something like that, well, I made it through. And I'm like, and we're fine, right? We're fine.

Chris 17:15

Right. You know, like we're all doing great, right?

Megan 17:19

And I think also one of the habits, if you will, you use that word, like is this like our habit, is to think about things at the individual level, right? We think about our individual level of mental health and we or we think about the kid struggling, right? And we we forget that that kid doesn't struggle in a vacuum, right? That that kid may have some genetic or individual level traits or whatever you want to say that are contributing. But when you think even at the individual level for yourself, there are multiple things that impact our emotional mental health, right? We might have a fight with a partner, right? Or there might be a law passed that we feel is directly against our well-being. Those are things outside of an individual that impact mental health. And so I think when we get people to think about that, they're like, oh yeah, naturally. But so often our solution to mental health challenge or crisis is at the individual level. So that's why we're still in this constant crisis. You know, I think a lot of people are starting to realize that we do have a youth mental health and really an adult mental health crisis as well, and a crisis of loneliness. But it's that we have to shift the way we're responding to it and we have to shift the way we think about it before we can shift the crisis.

Chris 18:51

But isn't that, I mean, not I'm not to not trying to be negative here, but isn't that so hard to do when we are in the crisis, right? Like who does the heavy lifting, right? Because a lot of us are are are still, right? We all still have that context, right? You don't just get a free pass once you've gotten through school, right? Like you still deal with tragedy on sometimes it feels like a daily basis, right? Or or right, just some days are hard to be the best version of yourself. A parental thing, right? Like the worst is when both parents are tired and the kid is not and wants to play, right? And just like, why why don't I'm tired, right? And you know, like does mom have the energy? No, does dad have like oh crap, like who's gonna who's gonna have the energy? Now you scale that up, right? Who has who has the energy?

Tech, Algorithms, And Teen Brains

Megan 19:39

I think what you're saying is really a key piece of this. What we are watching at a societal level is our our our valence toward or our facing towards community and building those communities is actually eroding, and there is evidence and data to. Support this, not just in Idaho, but across our nation. And I think it's partially because of this, like I call it like hustle or grind culture that we've become. So, you know, some of the technologies and the new computer tools that were supposed to make our jobs easier. And again, if we get back to like, why were we pursuing these things? I think originally we're pursuing these things for quality of life. Right. So that was how it was talked to me. Like, oh, you're going to have all these new technologies, and that's going to give you more capacity for quality of life.

Chris 20:36

That we're going to have more time to do these things that fill us in.

Megan 20:39

To hang with our families and love our families and our communities and our neighbors. And unfortunately, what happened somewhere in the way, we lost that. And we became this hustle grind culture, which means now those tools just help us be connected to work all the time. Right. So my phone has now become like a part of my experience. I can't not have my phone because what if someone needs me right now? Right. And so that means that regardless of the guardrails I put on it, there is almost an instant connection to work, to email, to coworkers. And, you know, so I think it's this societal change we're watching where we've gone away from community. And there's a million reasons for that. Please don't think it's just hustle culture. And I I what I think is so cool when we go around Idaho and talk with communities all over this state is this idea of calling us back to community, I think resonates with people. And I think folks that are older, you know, I am proud to be a geriatric millennial, I think is the correct terminology for me.

Chris 21:50

I can't keep track of what the cutoff dates are, so I don't even know what I am anymore.

Megan 21:54

I know I probably geriatric millennial or ex. That would be my guess.

Chris 21:58

I think I just it could it depends on whose definition. Like I'm I always say I'm old enough to remember what it was like to hand in my assignments all handwritten and then have to learn how to use the computer, but it was an optional thing. I remember what it was like to not have a phone. Yeah.

Megan 22:14

But I think one thing you may remember, and again, this is a gross generalization, we all didn't have this, but I think lots of folks who are older, we know what it felt like to have like a neighborhood block party, or or even something more simple. Like for me growing up, there were several families in our network that we would frequently have, like dinner, or you know, the adults and the children of all these families would get together quite regularly. We don't have that a lot right now because people are full. They're at capacity uh emotionally, I think, because of the drain of work, but also the constant information cycle. Our young people don't have that previous experience.

Chris 23:02

They don't have the memory of what it was like before. It's simply this is just the this is the way it way it is.

Megan 23:08

And their brains are, as all young people's brains do, this is really a normative experience, right? They're they're actually like in these teen years building that emotional capacity in their brain, if you will. And so they their brains are actually firing and wanting high highs and low lows. That's just part of the brain, like, you know, bringing that emotional system on track. What we often miss as adults is that their brains are doing that in a world full of information in a way that we didn't, and that yet their brains are susceptible to the emotions of that information quite more. So if you think about, you know, for me growing up, and I keep aging myself, I apologize, everyone. But like if a young person died by suicide, I might know it if it happened at my school or maybe in my city. I did not know it if it happened anywhere else. Right. It just wasn't the way that we got our information or that information was reported. And now, with the advent of all these like internet, like fast cycles, sorry, I snapped on our young people are finding out about death by suicide like almost every day and anywhere in the world, right? Like, and the problem with that is that something like suicide is contagious. So the more we put the idea in a young person's mind, the more it's there.

Chris 24:44

Well, and there's I mean, throughout history, terrible things have constantly happened, right? That's the and wonderful things have have always happened. Whether you knew about them or are or not, right? And there's some there's some truth in ignorance is bliss. Right? Of of you may not know about a tragedy, tragedy still happened, but it doesn't necessarily affect you. And now you're right, you're you're saying for part of that, for a developing brain, constant, constant high emotional stimulus.

Megan 25:14

Yeah, well, and that's the problem, right? We again to drive people to use these social media tools and things, folks have used evidence and research, maybe perhaps irresponsibly, by creating by understanding that our brain pays most attention to emotion and really loves that very negative emotion.

Upstream Prevention Explained

Chris 25:44

So you're talking about in terms of algorithms that social media relies on, right? Of how do you get people to look at these things? You tap into what will give them the biggest thing. Yeah.

Megan 25:54

So so not only is there this information onslaught, but there's also these algorithms that are literally pushing negative emotion at folks. And again, at a developmental moment where young brains are trying to grow. And so they're just exceptionally vulnerable and susceptible to it. So I'll just shout out one stone. The young people there have been working on a mental health project, and I've been kind of in the background for them there. And this new idea they came up with through lots of conversations is like disrupting the algorithm. And so they're building out this campaign for teenagers where they're gonna encourage folks to disrupt the algorithm.

Chris 26:36

To change what they're to change what they're feeling.

Megan 26:39

And it gives me chills because when they first said that in this meeting, we were, I was like, absolutely. Whatever you need from communities for youth to support this work, we are we are behind you. This is a genius idea.

Chris 26:52

Well, and I just heard of recently they're talking, I think, in West Ada about banning cell phones in the right, putting putting putting that down. And I'm not not necessarily probably for those reasons, but but to me, and I can see why people might have this adverse reaction to giving up that thing. But to me, I I would always tell people, right, pause and and reflect, why are you so dependent on the thing? I do that with myself. Like this is of I really wish I didn't look at my phone nearly as much. And I can I can talk like, well, I need to connect with my students, right? That work, right? That that that work life thing. But I remember it was totally fine to not have a phone. I I remember talking to my son about a son about this. I'm just like, oh, well, dad, how did you know, how did you tell someone that you were coming over, right? Or that plans had changed, and just like, well, you didn't all the time. There was some, there were some random things that that that happened and and everyone was okay with that. Now it's just, oh no, like I'm I'm texting grandma, we're on our way right before you just would have said, Well, I'll I'll come over at such and such time, and then you just did it. You didn't have to go through that that extra that extra layer. But I think if we're also scared of giving something up, sometimes that's a good reason to pause and go, ugh, can I but these are I think this is a great segue to what I like to talk about.

Data That Changes Priorities

Megan 28:11

So we can talk about this this problem or whatever of screens and the divides between like adults just don't have enough understanding of that experience to really be effective in that space yet. And I think we're trying to gain that really quickly. But phones, technology, et cetera, social media, that is really an example of a community norm that is hurting our kids, right? Like just this rampant like screens are everywhere, the information is unprotected, we don't really know the experiences of young people on those spaces because we're not even on the same spaces. I mean, that's how fast things move. But but I I caution people who just want to focus on that because there are lots of things in our community and or a society or the norms, whatever you want to call it, that are impacting the well-being of young people, right? And and the notion of trying to figure out what are those causes or those root causes or what's underneath that is what we call upstream prevention. And it's because so often we wait until young people are in crisis or in addiction, either to a screen or vaping or, you know, substances. And again, that that's extra bad at a young kid's level because our brains are making pathways. At that early teen is the last time that we're doing like like tons of synaptic firing. And I know that's a nerd thing, but anyway, we're making these strong pathways in our brain. And so when we start having these bad patterns about unhealthy mental thoughts, or when we start bad patterns about using substances or vaping or things like that, at this young age, it's extra bad because what we're doing is creating a pathway that then we have to step around for the rest of adulthood. I'm not saying if you use as a young teenager, you're gonna use forever, but you will have to step around that use as an adult because of the way that our brains develop.

Chris 30:21

The long-term consequences are worse because that the brain, it's not finished, it's not finished cooking yet. Right.

Megan 30:27

And there's so many fascinating things about this, but upstream prevention is rather than focus on the crisis, right? So often I'll talk to people in this state and they're like, oh yeah, we're doing prevention, we have a crisis center, or oh yeah, we're doing prevention, we have uh vape detectors in the bathrooms. And if you think about just the the ways in which prevention is being talked about, right? So a crisis center. A crisis has already had to happen. By nature of the word. Yeah, there's crisis happening, right? Or a vape detector in order for it to be effective, someone has to already be vaping, right? So we're saying prevention about things that are actually waiting for the bad thing we don't want for young people to happen and then preventing it at that point, right? So the idea of upstream prevention is going further up and thinking about what are the conditions in a community that make it just more likely for young people to thrive, to reach their full potential. And for some people, they're like, okay, that sounds great, but what do you mean? Right. And the good news is we have a lot of evidence about what those conditions are, sort of like a national level. We understand, and sometimes we call them things like risk or protective factors, right? And so a risk factor might be something like experiencing violence either in your family or in your neighborhood, right? That's a risk factor for lots of bad health outcomes for young people. A protective factor might be having one trusted adult who truly sees you and you can go to for support when you need it, right? Those are examples of risk and protective factors. And to think about it more like on a global scale, like thinking about upstream prevention and these risk and protective factors, I like to use the example because I'm a public health professional, but I'm a terrible eater. Like I will, I love fast food. I'll just say it. Well, I don't love it, but I like it. And when I lived in that small rural town, there were no fast food restaurants. So the conditions in that community made it so that I ate healthier because there was no fast, quick, easy thing. On the way home now, if I'm driving in my car, I pass eight places on state, right? And so the conditions in this environment make it much harder for me to avoid fast food. And so if that metaphor helps, some people think about this upstream prevention idea, right? Which is how do we make it the condition so that like there just isn't they don't have to make that temptation for substance.

Chris 33:04

They don't have to make that tough decision as much.

Megan 33:06

Yeah. And one of the things we say, because I did a lot of substance use prevention before I moved over to mental health here in Idaho, one of the things we say about substance use prevention is the absence or the opposite of addiction isn't abstinence. Right? It's connection. When we focus on abstinence, we're focusing on the wrong thing.

Chris 33:27

So so saying just don't do it doesn't that's not enough, right?

Megan 33:32

It doesn't change the factors for that individual. When we say the out the the opposite of addiction is connection, we're changing the factors. And in fact, this is true of even rats, you know, that cool rat study where they like put a bunch of rats in cages and they they offered them cocaine. Well, the rats who were alone and isolated from everybody else were like cocaine all day, why not? Right? When we put them in with like fun little rat friends, guess what? They don't do cocaine.

Chris 34:04

Interesting. I'm not familiar with this. You're not familiar. Oh my gosh, I love the site. I I knew I knew about the study that they've done with rats in terms of cocaine, right? And that substitute, but I didn't I I'm not familiar with the community aspect of it. That they chose that playing with their friends, playing with their friends, having cool stuff and they couldn't. By changing their environment, you didn't have to say, you didn't have to necessarily take the cocaine away. They just are just like, no, I'm I'm good.

Community-Led Solutions And Partners

Megan 34:29

Right. And so the cool part about this, I think, when we when we think about it in the youth mental health crisis, because a lot of people want to look away, and I don't blame them, right? When we see this huge, great multi-factor beast of a problem, and it's really hard. I know you and I are both parents, and I think as a parent, it's exceptionally hard to actually look at the problem because as soon as you put your kid in any of those hard circumstances, it's like your whole body stresses and you want to shut it out and shut it down and like, not my kid, not my town. And so I get why people have this like either compassion fatigue or overwhelm and they look the other way. The beautiful part, and why I'm such a huge fan of upstream prevention and why I will talk about this to anyone, anytime, anywhere, is that it helps us refocus on things that we can do. Because so many parents, when we, you know, toured around Idaho would say things like, you know, obviously I don't want this to be a crisis, but I'm not a mental health care provider. What can I do? And the awesome answer is you can do so much, right? And like, especially in some of the data we've collected across Idaho, one of the leading factors, believe it or not, I did not do the rat study. That was many, many years ago. But believe it or not, one of the leading factors in predicting depression or ideation for kids in Idaho is the lack of connection. So that's an exciting message to share with people because we all know at some level how to connect. And if not, there are different ways that we can learn and build our connection skills. And if we, as a state or as a community in Idaho, just focused on how do we help our kids connect to other peers and to other safe adults, we are doing way more for mental health and substance use prevention and all that than like becoming a secondary mental health care provider.

Chris 36:26

So, so if I understand correctly, it might be it might be easier than we all think in terms of we actually have many of us have the tools. Yeah. We might not think we have the tools. We might need, we we sometimes I I think we do, we get caught in that trap. We think we need to be an expert to solve a problem. Right. But in many ways, right, we can all be experts in human connection because we all have the capacity and the desire to connect with each other.

Megan 36:53

So yeah, I think it's easier and harder, right? Because we can't just have a cool mental health care speaker, right? Like that's not gonna be the thing that changes it. And so in that respect, it's harder. We can't just, oh, there's a two-week peer mentoring program, we're gonna put the problem solved. Yeah, check that box, right? It's harder because we're saying we have to shift our priorities as a community to focus on what we know is best for kids and like to agree together to do that. But once we do that, all of us have a role in it, and it's really it's it's easy. It's it's for most of us, it's what already sort of moves us.

Chris 37:35

And and so I I think we've right, we've set up the problem fairly well here, right? Now we're finally starting to talk, right? Like why why why people like you get into the work, right? Is you don't want to just do the theoretical. No. Right? You don't want to just collect the data, you want to do something with it. So so that process, and and I would encourage anyone interested, if you go to the Communities for Youth webpage, you're gonna see a lot of this information, this process of what is this, what does this look like? Not not as some a paper in a research journal. This is correct what us as members of a community, not necessarily mental health experts, can can can do. And that first part of that first step, and you've kind of talked about this a little bit, is that data collection, right? For us to know, well, what is the thing upstream, you've got to collect a whole lot of data because it's my guess as a non-expert is that it's not always the same for each community. And you can probably get really hyper local or more regional, and things will look different. What applies to one Idaho community might be different than another Idaho community. But it all steps with that starts with that data collection because right then, you know, so that data collection, now you have people who are invested in the same outcome. It would, I I would, I would argue it'd be hard to find a community anywhere in the state or otherwise that would say, no, you know, we really don't want our kids to be successful, right? I I would imagine you haven't we haven't run across that a lot of people who want the best for them. Now agreement on how to get there, right, is different. But so what you're talking about though is sharing what are the things that are going to make the biggest impact. Is that right?

Students Learning Through Real Engagement

Megan 39:17

Right. Data collection is huge, and people have different feelings about data collection. And we center the youth voice in our data collection, so we collect information from young people themselves because we think they are the source of the experience, right? What is their perception of their environment? What is their experience of the environment? And often what we have is a bunch of, again, very well-intentioned adults thinking about it from their perspective. And we all specialize, right? So we all have our thing. You know, I will always think of prevention, and some people will always think of, you know, crisis response. And we need all those players. But the data helps us. See past our own perspectives and anecdotes. And so I'll give you a great example of how powerful data can be. And one of a the communities that we surveyed early on, young people, they had gotten a bunch of funding and they were spending it all on things like vape productors and things like that. Because, you know, you talk to any administrator in any school in this country, and they'll be like, gosh, my desk drawer is full of vapes that I have to collect every day, right? It's a very visible problem with concrete sort of like, oh, here is a thing. Well, in that school, we found that only six percent of their kids were vaping, but 66% were were at the moderate to severe level of depressive symptomology. 66% 66% of their population.

Chris 40:54

Oh, not of just the 6%, the whole population. Okay.

Megan 40:57

The whole population. So I'm comparing, they were all focused on vaping because it's a very obvious problem. It's a trendy problem right now. So they were all focused on this vaping.

Chris 41:08

That's 6%.

Megan 41:09

Correct. And and missing the 66% of kids who were struggling. I mean, that is a huge amount. And it was hard for us to grapple with in that community at first, like, whoa, right? But once you see the power of that data, especially at that local level, and once we can show you not only that there's like this bad thing, right? Kids are struggling, but we can tell you, oh, here are the risk and protective factors in your specific community that seem to be contributing to that. And then what we do is we rally the community around those. And we actually stand up close with the community. We do a lot of community meetings where we're in small groups talking about, okay, here's what we see. What are the things that resonate with you that seem valid and match your community's needs? And then the community decides, okay, here's the one or two goals we're going to focus on for this year. Again, in order to improve the environment for our young people.

Chris 42:09

And and an important this is facilitated via communities for youth.

Megan 42:14

Yeah.

Chris 42:15

And what you're describing is definitely right, you're not telling communities what to do. Nope. You are facilitating and helping those communities with the data collection, with right, your expertise. But it really comes down to the local expertise of those communities. What are those communities going to be good at? And like so some examples of community partners, right? So you've talked about schools, but I would imagine parent groups, religious groups, nonprofits, all of the everybody who has mental health professionals, like you name it, we want them at the table.

Megan 42:48

People are like, who should be at this meeting? And I always say, everybody, because everybody has a role in the community, right? Everybody co-creates a community. And so, you know, small business owners need to be there, grandparents need to be there, everybody. Young people need to be there.

Chris 43:07

And and is then a secondary effect of that, I would imagine, is that so not only right, you get the community together and they start to solve these, but aren't you even then just strengthening the community itself kind of at a meta level, uh very meta-level, right? By the community having to come together for kids, the community just gets better because now there are these aspects of the community that are all now working for a shared vision. Again, I think that's such an important piece of dialogue that I feel is missing is that for the most part, I don't care what end of the political spectrum you're on or religious affiliation, all these kind of things, for the most part, if you look at like what makes the vast majority of good human beings, good human beings, like we all care about almost probably 90 to 95% of the exact same thing. And then we we focus on the five, right? Kind of like the vaping, right? The five percent, the really visible differences instead of celebrating the the shared, like we all want our kids to be safe.

Turning Conflict Into Collaboration

Megan 44:08

Yeah, and we all yeah, I think you're right on one of the hopeful byproducts or just you know, baked into the recipe is creating those meaningful, meaningful community-level connections. I think that's huge. And it's been so fun to watch the data show us that that's what is needed because it aligns really well, right? And then it's also nice, again, talking about upstream prevention and this importance of connection for the youth mental health crisis. In our communities throughout Idaho right now, there's a lot of disagreement to your earlier point about how to talk about mental health, whether or not we should be talking about it, what the right approach is to fixing it, right? Do you just say, like, buck up, kids, stop being right? And we always are thinking about these fights at the individual level. But I will tell you what, in communities, when we talk about connection, no one's like, bah, I don't want to connect, right? I don't think we should help our kids connect. And so it's so beautiful to actually get back again to like upstream prevention and to think about we can bring almost everybody in a community around connection, right? Around the importance of it. And in fact, there's other awesome baked-in or byproducts of this, right? I remember in one community in West Virginia, we had a loneliness as a problem as well. And we had some grandparents in the room and they're like, well, we're lonely too, right? And so a really beautiful, natural, again, community-grown solution, right? It's not coming from anyone, but here in the community, is that grandparents could start meeting with high school students just showing up at lunch, just sitting at tables. And man, is it awkward at first, right? But then it's amazing. You're seeing different groups of people co-solve problems, and you're seeing loneliness go down. Right. So it's that's why the data collection, I know people have different fears or worries about data collection, but when we do it hyperlocal and we do it in real time, so we turn the data around within two or three weeks. So that means that communities know right then and there what are our young people experiencing and how can we start working on it.

Chris 46:21

Which I think is really important because if you go into like the super academic literature, right, sometimes some of this data is like from three years ago, because it it takes a while. Like I'm not criticizing it, but that that academic process takes a while. And you're thinking, a lot's happened in the last three years, right? That snapshot, right? And and that that may not be too relevant. So that's that's amazing that you can that you can do it in that time to make it so that it's useful in that moment. And that also then so do you have I'm gonna imagine you've had some really wonderful results in communities. Do those communities come back for like, okay, we want another round, right? They're like, give us more, like we're ready for the next next thing. Does do those successes invigorate them to do it again? Have you like have you had some just fall flat where it's just like, oh, this didn't work? Or in general, once you engage those communities, are are do all signs point towards good things happen?

Results, Hope, And What’s Next

Megan 47:21

I will say if a community begins the survey work with us and works with communities for youth to kind of build out the upstream prevention. I mean, one of the key parts is that coalition, right? That that group of humans who are like, how do we make the best possible community for kids here in this community? That that group is hugely important. And then sharing youth voice with them and kind of centering what are the experiences for young people. And then again, something we said earlier is that there are really three pockets of important evidence. And I think a lot of conversations forget these, right? Because if we're talking in research journals, we often just talk about that evidence. But there are three pockets of evidence that this approach uses. One is, yes, absolutely, the research that exists in journals that's being done beautifully and really pushing our knowledge forward, right? But there's another bucket, and that is what's happening right now in the community. And so we collect that. And then there's a third bucket that's hugely important if we're going to do any translational work, which is what does the community feel is relevant? What does the community know about their experiences and about what will work and not work? And when you use those three pieces of information, and again, communities for youth, our job is to pull in those two and then to open the forum for that last piece, right? So our job is to sort through all those research journals and to synthesize and figure out what those mean and communicate it clearly to the community, bring it back to the community. Our job is also to create the right measurement tool, right? You can't just ask kids whatever, you have to use good, valid tools. And so we've worked on that with lots of Idaho leaders throughout the state, educators and others, to create that right body of questions. And then it's bringing that community together around those things and facilitating that. And so that's what communities for youth will do in that space.

Chris 49:19

So how does that, right? Like, if I hadn't said at the onset that right, you're a professor at Boise State, you could imagine this. I mean, this sounds like a full-time plus job, right? So so how does this how does this integrate in with your role at Boise State, right? So you do you have undergraduates, graduate students that are a part of this, right? I would imagine that this work can provide an opportunity to inspire our undergrads and and graduates of like this is how this is how a my public education can go back into the community that I'm from or that I care about.

Megan 49:57

Like is I okay, so this is my favorite. And I also realized that you asked me, are there any success stories? And so we should get to that at some point. I love this question about involving students because as you could probably tell, teaching is my it is the job of passion for me connecting with young people, connecting them to purpose, giving them the tools to develop to their best possible self, like that is all day, every day. And so you asked me about like, you know, this seems like more than a part-time effort. It is, but it's it's a passion, you know, it's a mission. And one of the best parts about being a faculty member, being a professor here while also getting to work on this cool, very inspiring challenge that we can overcome is that I get to engage students in it. And so we have a team of, you know, 13 kind of, they are definitely on the team all the time. And that is comprised of graduate students and undergraduate students. We also have some faculty members from across campus that engage in the work. And it is so cool because here most of our students who participate are our public health students. And so they learn, you know, what the textbooks and the articles say about this work, but it's pretty hard to just by reading, understand the complexities of real, true, authentic community engagement, right? Community engagement is a science, but people, because engagement is sort of a word that we use in everyday life, they're just like, oh yeah, so you engage them. So like you talk to them about stuff. And community engagement is literally getting deep, building those real, true foundational relationships in a community and standing next to them while they lead. That's our true goal, right? And saying, What do you need and filling in those gaps for communities? And it is messy. You know, it is, it looks, we have a very solid step-by-step process, right? And it looks different in every single, even like school community, not even just like community like Poise or, you know, it looks so different. And the beauty of engaging our students in that authentic work is that they understand what it is at a really deep level and they see it. So our students realize really early on, oh, this is the part of public health I want to do. Or, no, thank you. I would like to go crunch some numbers somewhere.

Chris 52:35

And those are good things to figure out early.

Credits And Where To Learn More

Megan 52:38

Exactly, right? And I just think it's so cool because they also see all the different facets of the work, right? A big part of the work is being great communicators, both like sort of externally at like a large public scale and also at those very intimate relationships that you're building with each player in that community, right? You need to really understand all of the different interests at the table, all of the different sort of feelings and barriers and challenges to the work. And engaging our students in that is really cool. And all our students play the role of, you know, earlier I mentioned we do community meetings in small groups. And all of them play the role of facilitator. And so they sit in those small groups and help the conversation continue to flow. They help sort of elevate quieter voices and help louder voices like you and me say less. And they so they have to sit in these tough conversations, right? Where we're talking about real hard things, but they also get to see that moment when people who come into the room upset change. And it's it's really cool. We I I tell this story often, and so people who have heard me talk have heard this before, but we went into one community where literally several very angry parents, very angry, came in screaming and like visibly emotional, you know, tears and tears and eyes from anger kind of thing. Like, who do you guys think you are coming here to talk about mental health? Like, you know, you don't, you're just creating the problem, yada, yada. And I just said, I would really like you to stay. Our goal here today is not to talk to you. So we're not here to like talk at you about mental health. We're actually here to listen, and we think your perspective is really valuable. And it was a huge meeting because I think part of that like tumult made it more, you know, more people showed. We had like almost a hundred people at that meeting. And so we had all our small group facilitators, and obviously I'm like, oh, my graduate student babies, they're sitting at these tables where people are like literally enraged. And by the end of the session, which is beautiful, like an hour and a half later, these same people that were yelling in my face were they said, Can I give you a hug? I'm so grateful. And, you know, I am not a big hugger, especially of people I don't know. So I was like, sure. But just the power of that made me know we were doing the right thing because what happened in that moment is that they felt heard. They didn't feel talked down to, they didn't feel they said, like, we go to these mental health things, and people just basically say, we're stupid or we're horrible humans. And at this, we just talked. And you had people in those small groups coming to things like, even though safe space is like, you know, in some groups, like, oh, what a stupid thing to say. You had those same people who would in other circles say that's stupid, understand why they're important, just because they're talking to each other in these small groups. And so I think the power, again, like you said, it's kind of baked in, but the power of bringing our community together is incredible. Like just coming back to our humanity, coming back to that shared value of like, of course, we want this to be good for our kids. What does that look like? And how do we how do we focus on what we can do together rather than all these sort of superficial and and I think that that work that you're talking about, that experience I I maybe maybe if someone's a really good online facilitator, maybe they they can feel free to disagree with this.

Chris 56:34

But those kind of things rarely happen unless you are face to face with the person. Right? We can yell at each other on the internet. So it's so much easier to be to be really terrible to other people or to to maybe not be terrible, maybe that's a little extreme, but to to to say what you're gonna say and then walk away from that conversation because right, their words on a screen, not a hum not a human being.

Megan 56:57

Right.

Chris 56:58

When that person is is there, whether they're hugging you or yelling at your face right now, the humanity is apparent. And and whether it's making you feel good or bad, it's right. You can't you can't walk you can't walk walk a walk away from that. That's it, that's right.

Megan 57:14

And those small groups call us to our humanity, right? We're looking at the people in the face, and there's something really powerful about that, and about every single human who participates in those, choosing to bring like their authentic best self to that moment is really powerful and again moves us forward, moves us beyond all these silly fights. Because if we just keep throwing food at each other, we're not changing the environment for kids. And our, you know, as adults, I like to call this out too. You know, as adults, we have the ability to shape our environment a little bit more than kids. So for instance, if we have a bunch of people that we have deemed stupid or bad in some way, we just keep them out of our life, right? Like they're not our friends, they're not in our networks, we don't hang out with them. But our kids go to schools, y'all, with everybody, with no tools, right? Because we're not doing it, we're not role modeling, you know, uh overcoming and getting to humanity. And so I think there's real power in this on so many levels.

Chris 58:21

It makes the community see all aspects of it. And I again, it's really, it's really hard because like you said, we as adults have a lot of power to, if we want, to select who we spend time with, right? And that's that's a privilege that we have for for for the most part. But this, right, you've that community, right? You can't, it's not a full community if you excise certain portions of it. And those portions, whether we want to accept it or not, are still important because, like you said, your kids are still going to school with all of those, right? You can't Yeah, with their kids. Yeah. And that and again, and and I think there's room you can debate this, and I'm sure that people could debate it with me, right? Like that to me, when we say things like diversity, diversity means so much more than where you were born or what you were looked like, but diversity of thought and experience and where you grew up and what you find passion about, you want all of that mixed together in a community because everybody, when we had talked about this before, before we were recording, right, of leveraging everybody's strengths. Everybody, everybody has something to bring to the to the table that's gonna positively contribute to this. There's not just one, there's not a few people that have all the answers. I'm very skeptical of people who tell me they have all the answers. Because my experience, my experience is that that's probably not the case. I certainly am not a person with all the answers. I usually just have lots of questions. But I I in in wrapping up, you said you had another success story. You said we need to come back to the success story. So, so right, we kind of start off like, oh, this is a heavy problem. Let's let's Let's let's end with the success story so that everybody can leave feeling happy and hopeful and they're gonna go out and maybe talk to community members that they haven't talked to in a while or or look at Communities for Youth, the website. If you're thinking, hey, my community could benefit from this, you've got a potential, potential partner with Megan and her group and her students and the wonderful people. So share with us this success story.

Megan 1:00:25

Sure. So we're early days, right? We started this work three years ago and just really started serving in most communities this year. But in one of our communities, we've now completed the survey cycle with community meetings three times. And we've seen their mental health, so like depressive symptomology as an indicator, right? Go from 66% to 30% to 24% in three years. And that is not because of Communities for Youth. That is because of the work that that community and the schools in that community are doing, of keeping focused on the goal, of remembering to call themselves to their best selves, right? Like building that best possible community. That is what they're doing. And Communities for Youth supports that effort, right? We help do some of that stuff that communities, you know, often don't collect data or analyze data, right? Or find the right research. And so that's we're the partner in that. We stand with them to do that. But that is an incredible success. And I hope to see similar things throughout. Yeah. And if you're looking for, if you're curious about us, of course, the website is a great place to start. And there are some resources on things you can do right now, today, to start working on connection in your own community. And we have some great partners in the work. So I'll just call out St. Luke's Community Health and Engagement, were our first believers. We did a children's needs assessment early on with them a couple of years ago, the year before COVID. And once we started talking about what we saw in that and really talking about this idea of upstream prevention and bringing the Icelandic prevention model into the into this space, they came alongside. They were an early believer. They said, absolutely, how can you support us doing this in our footprint? And I really am grateful for that because that allowed us to kind of ramp up. We also have Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation is a big supporter. They kind of were working in one of the communities that we began in. And then they were like, okay, how do we get this bigger? Because this we can see the good that can come of this. And so, you know, with those partners and some really incredible people in every one of those communities, it would take me too long to name. I have a great belief in this, and I would say stay tuned for more great outcomes.

Chris 1:02:51

Well, thank you so much. I again, as a community member, right? Uh as someone that is raising their child in a variety of communities here. I I really appreciate your effort. And I'm glad, like to me, it's always so rewarding to hear about the experiences that Boise State students that maybe they've been in my class or maybe not, but uh, but again, collectively, that they also get to benefit from this and learn how to do this. And and hopefully, right, right, they're the ripples in our pond, right? And they're gonna go out and make and continue to make those changes in community.

Megan 1:03:24

Yeah, that's a better metaphor. I usually use glitter. I'm like, I'm sprinkling glitter. Then one day someone will be like, What's this glitter? Oh, upstream prevention.

Chris 1:03:32

I I I have used that analogy before to the glitter, right? Because once it's like, where did that glitter? I don't know where that glitter came from. It's probably been passed off, but I always like to think of ripples, ripples in a pond, right? I drop I drop, I drop a rock and they just they all spread, they all spread out. But I thank you for your time. I'm I hope that your efforts continue to get support and to get recognized. But I would, I would imagine as more and more communities see those actual effects of that, that more communities are going to be interested in like, hey, we can actually make things better. It is possible because sometimes it feels like it's impossible and that that you know, and we're coming out of some really challenging times. So to see that kind of change within that last three years, like, holy cow, like what could we do when we weren't coming out of a global pandemic where everyone was really lonely and and and miserable? So that's very encouraging. So thank you for being a bright spot and I really appreciate your time.

Megan 1:04:28

Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Chris 1:04:35

If you'd like to learn more about any of the topics discussed on today's show, please visit boiseystate.edu slash research. I want to give a special thanks to Albertsons Library on the campus of Boise State for the recording space. The theme music for this show was composed and engineered by Boise State graduates Alan Skirvin and Taylor Ross. Thanks again for listening.